until it's gone away
by TolkienGirl
Summary: It's Donna who picks up the pieces (at least, the pieces she can find). (Post Season 5 finale; LOTS of angst. No slash, just friendship-a bit of Darvey, if you ship it).
**A/N: Much, much angst. That finale crushed me, excellent as it was. This is pretty canon, relationship-wise, and as such, I see strong hints of Darvey.**

 **But it's just lots of friendship all around. The poem, by the way, is mine.**

It's Donna who picks up the pieces (at least, the pieces she can find). After they leave the office, she shows up at the Zanes', has no words for Laura, only a tight, sympathetic smile and a hand on her arm. Laura points her upstairs.

 _Maid of honor,_ Donna thinks, as her heels sink into the carpet. _Best legal secretary this city's ever seen._

They're just titles, bookmarks in a closed chapter. The wedding never happened, and Pearson Specter Litt is just that, now. Pearson, and Specter, and Litt, and no one else.

She raps on the door she knows to be Rachel's. There's no answer.

"Rachel," Donna says, and then again, even more gently, "Rachel. I'm coming in."

The room is neat—tidied by a mother's hand, for a daughter who doesn't live there anymore. The bed is rumpled, though, and Rachel is curled up on her side with her knees tucked almost to her chest.

The dress is in the middle of the floor, like a fallen cloud.

Donna doesn't know what to say. That's been a trouble lately, one more layer of doubt atop a thousand striations of pain. Her confidence has all but slipped way.

She packs up the dress carefully, sliding its delicate straps over a satin hanger, hunting for the massive garment bag. Thinks, _over, it's all over._ Wonders how it would have felt to walk down the aisle with Harvey. Best man, maid of honor. Closer, maybe, then she'll ever be.

Rachel sobs intermittently, quiet, broken little noises that cut at Donna's heart.

 _You're weird._

 _We'll be friends._

They've come so far, and fallen farther.

And all Donna can feel right now, as she scrapes the zipper upward, hiding the gown from view, is—

Guilt.

Because of all of them, isn't her life the least ruined? Couldn't she pack up and go back to Cortland, get a job as high-school theater director? The curator of an arts center? Ithaca's a place for that.

Donna's the only one who took the Fifth.

(Is that what did it?)

There were a hundred tiny steps along the way. They danced along until the end, and they were so, so close. But Mike—

It's always that final choice. It has to be, because after that, it's over.

Was it Rick Sorkin, or how she gasped into the phone— _not now, Donna_ , she can hear Harvey saying—was it the secrets and the smirks and the close calls that knocked the wind out of them?

(The wind, but not the life. Not until now).

Donna's shoes pinch her feet. They shouldn't—they're fabulously expensive and she wears high heels every day of her life. But they hurt.

Everything hurts.

She sits down on the edge of Rachel's bed, reaches very slowly forward and rests a hand on Rachel's shoulder.

"I'm so, so sorry," she says. She's said those words so many times lately, heard them spin over in her mind—they almost don't sound like words anymore. Just soft, breathless sounds.

Rachel sobs again.

Donna sits there for a long while. The window is three inches open, and the curtains ruffle in the breeze like ghosts.

"I'll call," she whispers, finally, and gets up. Downstairs, the rise and fall of Robert and Laura's voices makes her shrink back—this private tragedy isn't hers.

She has plenty of her own.

She takes a taxi, and almost takes it home, but she knows that isn't where she should be.

Harvey's apartment is eerily quiet. Donna sits on the sofa, moves restlessly to the kitchen. Fixes her hair in the bathroom, pours herself a glass of wine. It all feels wrong.

She starts when the door opens, and though she almost doesn't know where to look, she ends up being unable to keep her gaze from him.

His eyes are red. She doesn't ask.

Harvey opens his mouth, but stops, as if he's lost his voice.

Donna pours him a glass of wine and holds it out.

He takes it, sips, and sets it down. Pivots on his heel, with all that force she knows him for, but stops mid-motion, as though he's lost all sense of purpose. Maybe he has.

Offhand, Donna wonders if Rachel's stopped crying.

"Did you…" Harvey begins hoarsely, and Donna supplies an answer, even if it's not the one he's looking for.

"I went and saw Rachel," she says. "Helped her put everything away." She toys with her wineglass. "I just thought I…I thought you might want some company."

Harvey nods.

In another moment, he tips his head towards the living room. In a moment, they're side by side on the sofa. Not quite close enough, for Donna—but she can't think of that now.

"My dad used to say—he used to say that you don't know the good days until they're over," Harvey says quietly.

Donna wrote a poem in high school, and won a prize. She won't speak of it now, but the first two lines run through her mind—

 _but we don't know the sky is gold until it's gray  
don't know it's love until it's gone away_

"I don't know what to say," she says. In that moment, every part of her feels very, very small.

Unexpectedly, Harvey's hand covers hers. The warmth of the gesture, the feeling—it's something he usually keeps inside. She knows that. And it comforts her, even though it makes tears spring to her eyes.

"Neither do I," he says.

They sit the way for a long time, staring straight ahead. Donna doesn't know if he cries; she only knows that she does. The daylight dims and the clock ticks and it's over, it's over, it's over.

Somehow, she feels certain that Rachel's still crying.

 _but we don't know the sky is gold until it's gray  
don't know it's love until it's gone away  
that's youth, they tell me, and no matter what we do  
our broken hearts don't hurt the way we want them to_


End file.
